Religion: Silenced Microphone

Father Riccardo Lombardi, S.J., is a kind of modern-day Savonarola. In
Italy between 1946 and 1956, the fervent little Jesuit, who was popularly
known as "God's microphone," drew crowds of 300,000 and more
for fiery lectures that urged rich and poor alike to recapture the zeal
of early Christians if they would save the world from Communism. In
1955, he set up an ambitious Better World Institute on Lake Albano,
near Rome, as a center for Christian studies of social reform. During
its first three years, while his friend and protector Pope Pius XII was
alive, more than 260 bishops,...